"At your feet, fair one," he replied, with undisguised admiration expressed in his every look, "and burning with jealousy at thought of him, for whose sake your sweet fingers plucked the petal of that marguerite."
She still held the flower, half stripped of its petals; he put out his hand in order to take it from her, or perhaps merely for the sake of touching for one second the soft velvet of her own.
Harry Plantagenet, close by, had stretched himself out lazily in the sun.
"Oh!" said Ursula, a little confused, still a little shy and nervous, "that . . . that was for a favourite brother who is absent . . . and I wished to know if he had not forgotten me."
"Impossible," he replied with deep conviction, "even for a brother."
"Your Grace is pleased to flatter."
"The truth spoken to one so fair must ever seem a flattery."
"Your Grace. . . ."
He loved to watch the colour come and go in her face, the dainty, girlish movements, simple and unaffected, that little curl which looked like living gold beside the small, shell-like ear. His passionate love for the beautiful was more than satiated at the exquisite picture before him, and then she had such a musical and tender voice; he had heard her singing just now.
"But you seem to know me, fair one," he said after a while.